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Language development
Language development or language acquisition is a process that starts early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry. Children's language development moves from simplicity to complexity. Infants start without language. Yet by four months of age, babies can read lips and discriminate speech sounds. The language that infants speak is called " gibberish". Usually, language starts off as recall of simple words without associated meaning, but as children age, words acquire meaning, and connections between words are formed. In time, sentences start to form as words are joined together to create logical meaning. As a person gets older, new meanings and new associations are created and vocabulary increases as more words are learned. Infants use their bodies, vocal cries and other preverbal vocalizations to communicate their wants, needs and dispositions. Even though most children begin to vocalize and eventually verbalize at various ages and at different rates, they learn their first language without conscious instruction from parents or caretakers. It is a seemingly effortless task that grows increasingly difficult with age. Of course, before any learning can begin, the child must be biologically and socially mature enough. Biological Preconditions Linguists do not all agree on what biological factors contribute to language development, however most do agree that our ability to acquire such a complicated system is specific to the human species. Furthermore, our ability to learn language may have been developed through the evolutionary process and that the foundation for language may be passed down genetically. Social Preconditions It is crucial that children are allowed to socially interact with other people who can vocalize and respond to questions. For language acquisition to develop successfully, children must be in an environment that allows them to communicate socially in that language. There are a few different theories as to why and how children develop language. The most popular explanation is that language is acquired through imitation. However, this proves to be more of a folk tale than anything. The two most accepted theories in language development are psychological and functional. Psychological explanations focus on the mental processes involved in childhood language learning. Functional explanations look at the social processes involved in learning the first language. Development of English syntax Although development is highly variable, these stages based on Roger Brown's 5 stages are a useful indicator: Stage 1: 0-26 months Present tense only, 1st person subject pronoun, questions signalled by intonation and no/not added to sentence structure, here/there/this/that used only with gesture Stage 2: 27-30 months Present Progressive (-ing) but without "to be" verb, ex. truck falling, not "the truck is falling", 1st person object and possessive pronouns and later 2nd person pronouns, some question inversion and questions form "what/verb + V + O?", auxiliaries such as can't, don't used in negative sentences. Prepositions emerge. Stage 3: 31-35 months Future tense used, articles "a", "the", 3rd person pronouns, auxiliary form used in questions "I can't play?", later inversion occurs "Can't I play?",copula verb acquired and regular past tense "-ed" used, coordinating ans subordinating conjunctions such as "and", "or", "but" used correctly. Stage 4: 36-40 months Plurals emerge and possessive "'s" acquired, plural pronouns, modal verbs, questions words "who, which, when how" emerge. Stage 5: 41-46 months Irregular and regular past tense, reflexive pronouns, question tags and negative copulas used. Stage 5+: 47+ months behind/in front, negative questions, negative pronouns "nothing, "nowhere". B.F. Skinner' believed that language was learned after birth as a result of making sounds and imitating those around us. As individuals hear words, they will attempt to repeat them, and with positive reinforcement the infant will eventually develop the correct pronunciation, which will therefore again receive positive reinforcement. Sounds and words that are not part of the accepted language will not be reinforced and will be lost. this is a part of the process referred to as 'Operant Conditioning.' Skinner's theory has some empirical support. Skinner's model of language learning is discussed in Behavior analysis of child development. It has been quite controversal. Skinner was one of the first psychologists to take the concept of imitation (a concept he referred to as echoic behavior) as a critical component in language development. Language acquisition is the process by which the language capability develops in a human. First language acquisition concerns the development of language in children, while second language acquisition focuses on language development in adults as well. Historically, theories and theorists may have emphasized either nature or nurture (see Nature versus nurture) as the most important explanatory factor for acquisition. Most researchers, however, acknowledge the importance of both biology and environment. One hotly debated issue is whether the biological contribution includes language-specific capacities, often described as Universal Grammar. For fifty years linguists Noam Chomsky and the late Eric Lenneberg argued for the hypothesis that children have innate, language-specific abilities that facilitate and constrain language learning . Other researchers, including Elizabeth Bates, Catherine Snow, and Michael Tomasello, have hypothesized that language learning results only from general cognitive abilities and the interaction between learners and their surrounding communities. Recent work by William O'Grady proposes that complex syntactic phenomena result from an efficiency-driven, linear computational system. O'Grady describes his work as "nativism without Universal Grammar". One of the most important advances in the study of language acquisition was the creation of the CHILDES database by Brian MacWhinney and Catherine Snow. Nativist theories Linguistic theories hold that children learn through their natural ability to organize the laws of language, but cannot fully utilize this talent without the presence of other humans. This does not mean, however, that the child requires formal teaching of any sort. Chomsky claims that children are born with a hard-wired language acquisition device (LAD) in their brains . They are born with the major principles of language in place, but with many parameters to set (such as whether sentences in the language(s) they are to acquire must have explicit subjects). According to Chomsky, when the young child is exposed to a language, the LAD makes it possible for them to set the parameters and deduce the grammatical principles, because the principles are innate. Mark Baker, presents arguments that not only are there certain "parameters" (as Chomsky called them) that are innate switches in the LAD, but linguists are very close to the point where these parameters could be put together in a "periodic table of languages" as determined by their parameter features. Baker's work is very controversial, however, because he has argued(1996: 496-515) that principles and parameters do not have biological or sociological origins, but instead were created by God (i.e. creationism). In contrast to Baker's theological creationism, Chomsky argues that language "... can be studied in the manner of other biological systems." . In addition, there are significant studies in biogenetics that strongly suggest that the genetic factors that combine to build the brain contain redundant systems for recognizing patterns of both sight and sound. Chomsky's claim then is that without an innate ability for language, human infants would be incapable of learning complete speech patterns in a natural human environment. This inability follows from the fact that the input available to the child - the speech of the community of adults around her - is insufficient, not providing the evidence required to determine what grammar the child should settle on. This is the poverty of the stimulus argument . This argument has been indicated to be in line with the Universal Grammar (UG), and has been proved by many researchers in first language acquisition as well as leading second language acquisition researchers such as Lydia White (McGill) and Suzanne Flyne (MIT). In contrast, psychologist Catherine Snow at Harvard argues that children do not have to deduce the principles of language from impoverished and ungrammatical scraps of talk, but are presented with the evidence they need through parent-child interaction. Some studies of child directed speech or CDS suggest that speech to young children is usually slow, clear, grammatical, and very repetitious, rather like traditional language lessons. Others have argued that "baby talk" is not universal among the world's cultures, and that its role in "helping children learn grammar" has been overestimated.''' Chomsky first articulated the argument from the poverty of stimulus in a critical review of a book by the behaviourist psychologist B.F. Skinner Non-nativist theories Non-nativist theories include the Competition model and Social interactionism. Social-interactionists, like Snow, theorize that adults play an important part in children's language acquisition. However, some researchers claim that the empirical data on which theories of social interactionism are based have often been over-representative of middle class American and European parent-child interactions. Various anthropological studies of other human cultures, as well as anecdotal evidence from western families, suggests rather that many, if not the majority, of the world's children are ''not spoken to in a manner akin to traditional language lessons, but nevertheless grow up to be fully fluent language users. Many researchers now take this into account in their analyses. Furthermore, as any parent knows, children often pay scarce attention to what they are told to say, instead sticking to their own ungrammatical preferences. Nevertheless, Snow's criticisms might be powerful against Chomsky's argument, if the argument from the poverty of stimulus were indeed an argument about degenerate stimulus, but it is not. The argument from the poverty of stimulus is that there are principles of grammar that cannot be learned on the basis of positive input alone, however complete and grammatical that evidence is. This argument is not vulnerable to objection based on evidence from interaction studies such as Snow's. However, an argument against Chomskian views of language acquisition lies in Chomskian theory itself. The theory has several hypothetical constructs, such as movement, empty categories, complex underlying structures, and strict binary branching, that cannot possibly be acquired from any amount of input. Since the theory is, in essence, unlearnably complex, then it must be innate. A different theory of language, however, may yield different conclusions. Examples of alternative theories that do not utilize movement and empty categories are Head-driven phrase structure grammar, Lexical functional grammar, and several varieties of Construction Grammar. While all theories of language acquisition posit some degree of innateness, a less convoluted theory might involve less innate structure and more learning. Under such a theory of grammar, the input, combined with both general and language-specific learning capacities, might be sufficient for acquisition. Critical Period hypothesis Linguist Eric Lenneberg (1964) stated that the crucial period of language acquisition ends around the age of 12 years. He claimed that if no language is learned before then, it could never be learned in a normal and fully functional sense. This was called the "Critical period Hypothesis." An interesting example of this is the case of Genie, also known as "The Wild Child". A thirteen-year-old victim of lifelong child abuse, Genie was discovered in her home on November 4th, 1970, strapped to a potty chair and wearing diapers. She appeared to be entirely without language. Her father had judged her retarded at birth and had chosen to isolate her, and so she had remained until her discovery. It was an ideal (albeit horrifying) opportunity to test the theory that a nurturing environment could somehow make up for a total lack of language past the age of 12. She was unable to acquire language completely, although the degree to which she acquired language is disputed. Detractors of the "Critical Period Hypothesis" point out that in this example and others like it (see Feral children), the child is hardly growing up in a nurturing environment, and that the lack of language acquisition in later life may be due to the results of a generally abusive environment rather than being specifically due to a lack of exposure to language. A more up-to-date view of the Critical Period Hypothesis is represented by the University of Maryland, College Park instructor Robert DeKeyser. DeKeyser argues that although it is true that there is a critical period, this does not mean that adults cannot learn a second language perfectly, at least on the syntactic level. DeKeyser talks about the role of language aptitude as opposed to the critical period. Additional arguments for nativism However, there is emerging evidence of both innateness of language and the "Critical Period Hypothesis" from the deaf population of Nicaragua. Until approximately 1986, Nicaragua had neither education nor a formalized sign language for the deaf. As Nicaraguans attempted to rectify the situation, they discovered that children past a certain age had difficulty learning any language. Additionally, the adults observed that the younger children were using gestures unknown to them to communicate with each other. They invited Judy Kegl, an American linguist from MIT, to help unravel this mystery. Kegl discovered that these children had developed their own, distinct, Nicaraguan Sign Language with its own rules of "sign-phonology" and syntax. She also discovered some 300 adults who, despite being raised in otherwise healthy environments, had never acquired language, and turned out to be incapable of learning language in any meaningful sense. While it was possible to teach vocabulary, these individuals seem to be unable to learn syntax. The developmental period of most efficient language learning coincides with the time of rapid post-natal brain growth and plasticity in both humans and chimpanzees. Prolonged post-natal brain growth in humans allows for an extended period of the type of brain plasticity characteristic of juvenile primates and an extended time window for language learning. The neotenous pattern of human brain development is associated with persistence of considerable language learning capacity into human adulthood. Derek Bickerton's (1981) landmark work with Hawaiian pidgin speakers studied immigrant populations where first-generation parents spoke highly-ungrammatical "pidgin English". Their children, it was found, grew up speaking a grammatically rich language -- neither English nor the broken pidgin of their parents. Furthermore, the language exhibited many of the underlying grammatical features of many other natural languages. The language became "creolized," and is known as Hawaii Creole English. This was taken as powerful evidence for children's innate grammar module. Articles for developing *Brain plasticity and localisation in languge development *Development of meaning *Individual differences and language development *Phonetic development *Second language acquisition *Speech development *Social context and language development *Vocabulary development See also * Animal language acquisition * Babbling * Child of Deaf Adult * Disorders of language development * Fis phenomenon * Foreign language learning * ILR scale (levels of language proficiency) * Jean Berko Gleason * Language * Language attrition * Language delay * Language disorders * Lev Vygotsky * Metalinguistics * Origin of language * Reading development * Second language acquisition * Sign language in infants and toddlers * Speech development * Steven Pinker * Verbal communication * Wug Test References Further reading * TUTION TO INTUTION author Dr. K.N.ANANDAN date 2006 Transcend publications Calicut Kerala * * * * * * * External links * Birth Of A Language - regarding Nicaraguan Sign Language. * Open Directory Project: Language Acquisition * Language Acquisition Device Found: A satirical look at the concept of the LAD. * Notes from a language learner of two years * Mentalcode Customized Memory Exercises, a free, web-based flashcard program especially for learning foreign languages. Users share practice sets. Full-fledged courses will follow. * How-to-learn-any-language.com * Forum on Second Language Acquisition Category:Childhood Category:Cognitive development Category:Intellectual development Category:Language acquisition